(first published 3/14/2012) Cavaliers: of course they’re rugged and long lasting. How else did I come about having at least a dozen in my files? The only one I don’t have, and am still looking for, is the first year (’82) with the 1.8 engine. Like most GM cars, they did get better after a decade (or two) to iron out the worst bugs. But the 1982 with the OHV 1.8 was truly a stinker. And when I find one, I’ll do it justice. BTW, I actually saw a ’82 Cimarron with the 1.8 in traffic one day, but I was walking. Now that’s a rare find. Anyway, I will share with you the most exotic of my Cavaliers, a gold-on-black convertible. Maybe someone will tell me the year; I can’t be bothered right now. Actually, the convertible roof makes this car look better.

That profile is not bad; reminds me a bit of the angular handsomeness of the ’77 Seville rag-top conversions, which looked quite decent having ditched the fake and abruptly-cut off vinyl roof. I don’t know what GM’s long fascination with vertical rear windows was, but it was unfortunately done on way too many cars (not the Cavalier; I’m digressing).

Ah yes, that distinctive vertical ribbed vinyl on the J-car front door; how deeply that is impressed in the memory. The steering wheel has lost most of its color, but than it has been a quarter century.

Wonder how much someone paid for this when it was new?

75 Comments

I dated a girl who had a white Cav convertible – in 1998. After one trip around Baltimore in it, I told her I would not ride in that car ever again. Top leaked, every interior panel seemed like it was going to fall off (a few had), it was questionable whether or not it would start. After our relationship ended (nothing to do with the car), she got $500 for it and bought an Explorer Sport.

I’m referring to the Chevy “121” OHV engine, that was also a 1.8 in its first year only. It’s famous sluggishness caused it to be enlarged to 2.0 for subsequent years. The Brazilian 1.8 is the Opel-designed SOHC engine, which was optional in the Pontiac, Olds and Buick J-cars.

I had the misfortune of driving a 1.8 litre for a couple of days when I was selling used cars. Heads and above the worst car I have ever driven. Makes an Iron Duke Celebrity seem like a rocket. I can’t for the life of me ever understand why they produced this engine, when all their foreign (and especially Japanese) were moving, or had move to, modern OHC designs with proper port fuel injection. The real kicker was the 1982 Cav was the most expensive car in its class. Way to go, GM!

My dad paid $14,995 in kiwi pesos for a sedan we didnt get ragtops and survivors of these cars are very rare I will shoot a Holden version Paul just for you so your collection is complete dont hold your breath though there is one here abouts but I havent seen it for a year.All our Camiras except the Isuzu version were rebadged Vauxhalls which morphed into the Vectra with Holden badging in the early 90s

If I had the time and the inclination I would love to take a convertible Cavalier and add all the Cimmaron parts and facias to it and create a drop top Cimmaron.

The color of the featured car reminds me of the clean 84 Sunbird LE convertible I almost bought like 7 years ago, it was triple brown and loaded, with power windows,locks,seats, cruise, the highend Delco stereo and whitewalls with Pontiac wire wheels, like the ones on a Bonneville, but the tiny versions, it was an old couples car they were the original owners and kept it in great shape.

@Carmine: No lie, I literally drove home on the freeway next to an immaculate 1988 Sunbird turbo convertible last evening. The guy driving the ‘Bird was probably wondering what I was staring at; I haven’t seen one in that good of a condition in many years. I was trying to see if it had a For Sale sign on it. The guy driving probably thought I was nuts…

I should note that the weather in Western Michigan is in the upper 70’s this week which is rather unusual for us. Of course, if I had access to a convertible, I’d break that thing out whenever I could!

christauph

Posted March 15, 2012 at 8:29 AM

My great aunt has a red ’93 Sundbird coupe, top of the line model with white leather interior and sunroof. Last I heard it still had less than 40k miles on it. It only comes out in nice weather (which we are having right now in MI!), but I’ll grab some pics next time I see it, easily the nicest example I’ve seen in years.

Rob Finfrock

Posted March 15, 2012 at 4:45 PM

The all-white interior available in the 1992-1993 Cavalier and Sunbird was actually vinyl, not leather. It was a surprisingly good imitation, especially for GM.

Agree, 84. I just sat upon the red leathers of an 82 Cim in the JY. Odo read 55k and looked less. Slap me silly, but I admired the (interior) lipstick job on this lil piggy. It even has the “astroroof”. Chances are it’ll be crusher bait nearly complete.

Everything is relative. What were you earning back then? I took out a loan for a new 79 Mustang Cobra without AC, center console or sunroof. But it did have the TRX suspension. It came to just over $8,000. The interest on the bank loan was over six per cent. My gross pay at that point in life was $1200 a month. Add in rent, food, insurance and life in the single fast lane and some months my wallet was lighter than usual.

When my wife and I bought an 82 Cavalier sedan with the 1.8 and manual gearbox, the GMAC loan offered 13 per cent interest! Remember that recession? We gave the car up after a year and bought a used Torino wagon for cheap and saved money while enjoying less stress.
The Cavalier was well put together, the engine pinged all the time. But never broke down in our hands.

While the early ones sucked, there is one aspect of the final generation Cavalier convertible worth noting, and that is the exceptionally well-designed headliner handle for lowering/raising the top. It was a simple one-handed affair that both unlatched/latched the top in addition to operating the motor. It rivaled the best from Mercedes.

As the saying goes, even the blind nut finds a squirrel once in a while, so, too, does GM occasionally have a minor stroke of brilliance.

IIRC,GM farmed out the design and engineering of the convertible J’s (both early and late) to Heinz Praechter’s American Sunroof Company (ASC).

Later in the second gen’s run, ASC set up a satellite assembly line down the road from Lordstown in Jackson Township, Ohio. ASC took cars that were specially prepped at Lordstown and finished the conversion (adding tops and the mechanisms) offline from the main factory. I can’t remember when the facility shut down, I think it was after the convert was dropped for the 2000 MY.

ASC did convertible conversions for practically all the automakers in the US. I pretty much think if you saw a convertible car in the States at that time, ASC had something to do with it.

Could the Cavalier pictured be a transplant from Pittsburgh? In the 80’s, dealers advertised Pittsburgh Steelers Black and Gold cars. I saw a few Pontiac editions back then, never saw a convertible, though.

Actually, Paul, the first year was 1981. The MISERABLE 1.8 was replaced for the ’83 year with a 2.0 in the Chevy, 1.8 sohc in the Pontiac (standard). I don’t know about the other versions, but whatever was the later engine, it came in ’83.

Maybe I’m dreaming Paul. I finished grad school in the spring of ’81. I was dreaming of replacing my tired old beater with the vast income from the new job which was surely around the corner(!). I remember thinking the “J” cars looked pretty good, and wished I could afford one. But then, that’s my memory- up against the likes of yourself, what do I know ;)? Maybe I dreamed of that car the following Fall, and don’t remember right.

Needless to say, I would eventually find out that looks were deceiving, and I didn’t want one after all, but that was later – that miracle job took a while.

I can remember my first impressions of the J Cars, Which as a GM is The Standard-Medium all others are judged against… I was Partial to GM, But The J Cars were $$$ for The size… Why… Hmmm Cavalier sold on 40 Standard Feature, 4 Wheels, tires, steering wheel, ignition, well thats 10 of them…

just the standard shite, plus interval wipers ! Radio?!

The Cimarron Was particularly Puzzling, with its Letherette like leather seats, and a ?!!! 5 Speed Transmission” Yes, With a Clutch, a Cadillac! but wtf why was it more than a Deville? Could they Not Have Spent $200 making it look grander somehow…

I rarely liked to think of my First Convertible being such a Prime example of The J Car and Its InHERent shortcomings, especially as a $10k car or More… by the 94 Convertibles the Price for an Ac Auto V6 Conv…was well over 20k IIRC…

Huh?? As the owner of several SAABs, and other vehicles as well, I don’t see any connection of note. My SAABs all gave over 200k of really good service, but I’ve yet to meet too many Cavalier owners boasting the same. There may have been some shared components, but it wasn’t the same car. Certainly the interiors were WAY different. So was the suspension. And the engine. And the body.

That’s a bit like saying the 2001 Holden Monaro is an early 90s Opel Senator with a Holden badge slapped on it. True to a point, but vastly over simplified.

The GM-900/early 9-3 might have had its roots in the J Car (and is recognised as being a pretty poor Saab for that!) but the evolution from one to the other is not as simple as “slapping a swedish suit on it”.

Sam

Posted March 15, 2012 at 9:48 AM

Bryce, that is incorrect. The ’94-02 Saab 9-3 and the Gen 3 Vauxhall Cavalier used the GM2900 platform, which also rode under the Saturn L-series. The Gen 2 Vauxhall Cavalier was the European J-car, which is probably the source of your confusion.

One fact: An AWD 2.0 liter turbo Vauxhall Cavalier was available. Like I said, this was definitely not a J-car.

Bryce

Posted March 15, 2012 at 4:05 PM

But the Vauxhall 2.0 4WD was a SAAB the trolls at Trollhatten reclothed Vectras untill the end that was the platform they were given and it evolved from the J car

“Originally launched in 1988 in the Opel Vectra A, the GM2900 went on to underpin the Opel Calibra coupe, the second-gen Saab 900 (which was also the first-gen Saab 9-3 by means of a mild facelift), then updated for the Vectra B in 1994, and later stretched by Saab to underpin the 9-5. This stretched version, called GM2902, finally made it to North America in 2000 as the basis for the Opel-engineered Saturn L-Series.”

The Vauxhall 2.0 4WD had a fully independent rear suspension; whereas the ’94-02 Saab had a beam axle with Panhard rod. They were related in other ways, but again, the Vauxhall was not a J-car. It was a GM2900 car.

“the trolls at Trollhatten reclothed Vectras untill the end ”

No, the last Saabs (9-3 and 9-5) were Epsilon based. I’ve driven an Epsilon based Pontiac G6, and that was really nice for a GM car, nothing like the horrific J-body Pontiac Sunfire I had once as a rental car.

If pointing out the truth about SAABs is dissing them so be it GM sucked thousands of buyers in with SAAB badges over the years they just glued them to Vectras and the uninformed went nuts trying to empty their wallets.

bowman

Posted March 6, 2015 at 7:28 AM

haters gonna hate. the saab 900 is as much a vectra as the 9000 is a Alfa 164.

Back in the 80’s, at my old company the VP of Marketing’s wife drove a Cavy convertible similar to the one in the OP. He gave it to her as a wedding present. (I’m guessing the car in the photo is a 1984, it looks similar to hers.)

That company was (and remains, IIRC) an OEM supplier, our biggest account then was GM. If you’ve ever driven a GM car with an alternator, and most everyone since 1968 has, you drove around with one of their parts in the car.

The weird thing was, the VP liked the car way more than his new bride, and would routinely drive it work! It’s hard to imagine a VP of rather large company driving a $14K Chevy convertible… But it happened…

Friends had an ’85 Cavalier four door, it was white with tan interior, automatic, AC, I think power windows, locks and a decent for the times factory tape deck, at least it sounded MUCH better than the POS factory deck that was in my Mom’s 83 Buick Skylark they bought new.

Anyway, I never found it terribly bad to ride in anyway and I don’t think they had much in the way of mechanical issues with it either.

In the very late summer of 2001, I went with the president of the JC’s I was a member of at the time and her BF who drove I think a late 90’s bright blue Cavalier 2 door coupe to Eastern Washington to do some river rafting in mid September and the car rode fine while in the back seat but it was obvious the car had been on the vine a bit too long at that point though.

Still in all, I never felt them to be the worst out there, but certainly not always competitive in any case and just became obsolete and out dated by 2004.

In looking back at the pics, it’s kind of sad that GM used painted plastic, rather than embedding the color INTO the plastic substrate itself, that says it right there about how they perceived quality, not much.

OK neither exactly sets the world alight but it seems to me this is that rarest of things: an international GM where the Chevrolet version’s better looking. Somehow that boxy front end seems to work much better with the ragtop roof than the 80s cavalier convertible I’m familiar with:

Years ago I worked as a mechanic at a now-defunct Chevy dealership in L.A’s posh Wilshire district.

One of our more unusual used car trade-ins was a two-door Celebrity sporting a convertible conversion. It wasn’t some crude hack job. It was a proper convertible with moveable side quarter windows, headliner, and a canvas top of very high quality. The workmanship was first rate. The only downer was it was painted an unusual shade of purple, with a matching purple top.

Gross color aside, it was very nicely done. Everyone’s big question was “why???”.

For the record, I had a 1984 Cavalier Convertible 5 speed in Triple Brown for almost 10 years, from 2/89 until sometime late in 1998.

It had been advertised @ Felix Chevrolet In Marina Del Rey in the LA Times, for $4995.

I desperately wanted to have a Convertible that I had dreamed of having for already 25 of my 30 years… and for some reason this 84 GM Conv, was within my reach, must have been the combo of BROWN -3 way, with a 5 speed Manual.

I insisted on an even Trade For My 1985 Grand Am LE Coupe V6 Auto… and they went for it…. !

After i got In and musled my way onto the Freeway in my new toy, a covertible adds a toy like aspect to any car, once the top is lowered. I Love The Look Top up as Well, altho this was a noisy 5 speed, which probably helped the car last 9 years, much of it $300 here $400 there every 6 months or so….. not so much once I got The Bugs Out but 2 Head Gaskets later…

It Made it the 400 miles each way to SF and to Las Vegas and back , but How stubborn was I Hanging onto this Compromise car, Neither As GT AS a Mustang Would be, Nor as Luxurious as even a Lebaron would be… WHY Did I Think a GM was Better than a SUPERIOR Larger More HOT Convertible such as Mustang, Much Less many of The Imports.\

I Should Have Had a Miata at some point too. And Yes a cadillac, perhaps a cheap XLR Someday?

I must have missed this first time around. I kind of like these too, but then I’m a sucker for a folding fabric roof on a car.

My BIL got a sunbird convertible as a rental once and brought it around for me to look at. I recall thinking that the convertible top excused a lot of sins that I would not normally find forgivable. And I agree that these were quite attractively styled, much better than the original LeBaron.

I remember when the Cavalier was first released. I was less than impressed with its styling, and I sure as hell didn’t like it’s poor build quality. I find it incredible that the car stayed on the market as long as it has.

The funny thing was that when these were introduced in early 1981 as 1982 models it wasn’t the build quality or materials that were harped about. Most magazine reviews gave this car decent marks in this area. It was the 1.8 and sluggish performance that was criticized along with the higher than expected prices when optioned up that dragged this one down. GM responded by both lowering prices a bit and introducing the TBI enlarged 2.0 liter engine which helped both sales and customer satisfaction enough to move this car’s sales higher from then on. If memory serves correctly they de-contended a couple of formally standard items on the 83’s to arrive at the lower starting prices.

I remember reading some of these reviews. I was too young at the time to drive, being only 8 yrs old when this car was introduced. But I remember being unimpressed with Car and Driver, Road and Track, and Motor Trend’s reviews on the car. I was less than impressed with the car itself. I thought it was ugly looking, I got to sit in the passenger seat of one example, and it all looked cheap. Hardly worth the money one wished to pay to buy the car. I didn’t think that the car would last a day outside the showroom floor, never mind 33 yrs. Fast forward 33 yrs later, I still see some of these cars on the road. They still look ugly to me, but apparently, they were well made enough to withstand the tests of time. 🙂

The Cav stayed on the market for a long time as a favorite of fleets, such as for rental car companies.

The J-car convertible was quite common in rental fleets in Hawaii. Easy to drive, easy to raise and lower the top, well suited for the place. Don’t need a fast or particularly powerful engine for the islands. I did notice the body flex while driving them, which wasn’t unusual for ragtops of that era.

Yes, it’s possible – usually with extra bracing to the chassis for a convertible, but of course, at the cost of extra weight (which can affect handling) and cost. So it is a matter to what degree a manufacturer will do to reinforce the chassis to make a ragtop more rigid.

I had an 82 J2000 with the pushrod engine and 4 speed transmission. It was a medium blue inside and out…for the 1st few years. While the car was basically quite….sturdy (it felt like it was built from iron) little/odd things broke off over time. The exhaust manifold cracked…then broke in two. The shift knob, actually, the hard plastic covering that appeared to be the shift knob, broke into pieces. The knob on the window crank broke off. And against the harsh Texas sun the ALL VINYL interior faded into 5 or 6 shades of blue-grey.

Oh, I almost forgot the alternator that had to be rebuilt when the car was about 5 years old. The “symptom” of it’s impending death? ALL the idiot lights started flashing at random intervals when driving down the road.

That car was slow enough that 4 gears in the transmission was probably wishful thinking. And the engine sounded like a bad sewing machine.

My recently deceased wife of 24 years (she left us on Valentine’s day at noon after a long illness), when she was my girlfriend, bought a 1982 Cavalier as a replacement for a 1980 Sunbird which a motorcycle had totaled. Stinker isn’t quite the right word. Salvage when it came off the lot would be more fitting. The biggest thing that happened was when the cooling fan relay (a $5 part) caused a head gasket failure. It cost her $300 in 1981 dollars to fix, and GM gave her no help. And my darling drove that pos for almost 7 years. It always had something wrong with it. When the CV joint boots wen out at less than 100000 miles and the front end started jumping around, we decided that was the final straw. And people actually bought those things.

I had an ’85 Sunbird convertible briefly one summer about 10 years ago, was a copper color with a tan ragtop and low km, spent it’s life in the Okanagan Valley and ended up in Calgary, where I lived back then.

While it was clean and in really good shape, it was also a prime example of how garage kept, low mileage cars are not always as good as you might think. Once I started to drive it with some frequency, it started to ask for parts in a quick fashion, the final straw being when the head gasket went in busy traffic on a hot summer day. I had it repaired for a few hundred dollars, but it was never the same again after that, and I parted with it shortly thereafter.

It was slow… but it was a cool little car… and I enjoyed it for the short while that it ran perfectly.

I remember the first Cavaliers. I had been employed by the City of Chandler Fleet services department for 5 years when they first came out. All they had were the 4 door versions, the govt. doesn’t buy 2 door or convertible cars. In the early years both the engines and transmissions (all automatic) and mounts were troublesome. They were one of the first GM FWD cars, and had a ton of bugs. And the strippers were cheap. The interiors did not hold up, but for such a cheap FWD car, the body seemed pretty solid. I find very little cosmetic difference between the Cavalier convertible and the Fox body Mustang convertible, just another reason I did not like the Fox cars. The first and second generation Cavaliers looked pretty decent. I especially liked the wagon, too bad it was FWD. The third generation Cavalier (1995-2005) was one of the first jelly bean cars and was ugly to me even as a 2 door and convertible.

Not a bad-looking car in retrospect. It somehow does benefit from the convertible roofline rather than the blocky stock job. And these blunt quad-lamp noses (one of the closest things to a Chevy corporate “face” that we’ve ever seen, they all had the same look in the early 80’s) worked well on the convertible.

Though I’m not really a J-car fan overall, a convertible Sunbird GT could tempt me on the right day. Or a hidden-lamp Skyhawk Limited wagon, retrofitted with the suspension upgrades from the T-type.